In the last week I've received many a phone call and email inquiring about how the newsworthy epic storm of Alaska has impacted my little village of Oscarville. Honestly, for the most part we only received extra snow dumps except for last Saturday when a short blizzard came through. The visibility was so low I was not able to even see the play deck out of the back door of the school (a matter of yards). The school building shook with the force of winds more powerful than I have experienced yet while in Oscarville.
Saturday we had a make up day, so it was a half day for students. Our NYO team was in Bethel competing and were supposed to return Saturday afternoon. However, the blizzard, left much snow but the temperature was not really cold. The result was that our back trail to Bethel became slushy and dangerous to travel over. One of our parents had headed to Bethel to help bring back our NYO team via snowgo and ended up turning back because the trail was not safe.
Our principal also had trouble returning from Bethel due to the sketchy condition of the back trail, so he went to stay with the NYO team until it was safe to travel back to the village. On the trail, Galen ran into couple of State Troopers who were having trouble on the trail.
The Troopers were heading to Oscarville to handle a "situation" and with them they had two filmers from the show "Alaska State Troopers". One of the snow machines was stuck in ice and water and all four people were soaked because of their snowgo swamping into unfrozen water. One of the filmers said that they were setting up survival gear before Galen came because of the severity of the cold and the possiblity of having to hunker down until help arrived. The ride from Bethel to Oscarville typically takes about 20 minutes on a snowgo; however, the Troopers and Co. had been stuck out there during the blizzard for several hours. Luckily, Galen was able to get the people out and back to Oscarville where they could warm up and dry out.
My classroom became a makeshift drying room and it was incredible how much gear was scattered about the room. I loaned the women dry clothes and hair dryers became boot dryers.
Mrs. Straw invited them all over for dinner (tacos), as well as, Tiffany and myself. Then we women watched the first movie in the "Twilight" series. A needed escape for our shaken guests and a requirement for me from my roommate to prepare for the lastest sequel movie in the series we plan to watch over Thanksgiving break. (How old are we again?)
It was imperative to get the snow go out before the temperature fell too much. Community members went out and helped the Troopers haul out the second snowgo. Thankfully the temperature dropped enough to make the trail safe for travel which meant our NYO team and principal could return to Oscarville in the night.
Troopers and Co. stayed the night at the school and then safely returned to Bethel Sunday morning.
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